In
August 1914 Ernest Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven sailors
and scientists left Britain for the Antarctic on the Endurance,
planning to cross the Antarctic on foot. Only 80 miles from Endurance's
destination, the ship was caught in thick pack ice that eventually
splintered and sank it. The men set up camp on ice floes that
drifted on a frigid sea 2,000 fathoms deep. Eventually they managed
to sail lifeboats to Elephant Island, one of the most uninhabitable
islands on earth. Because the men were faced with sure death,
Shackleton and a handful of his strongest men took the lifeboat
James Caird 800 miles to South Georgia Island. The seventeen-day
trip was unimaginably grueling. The men kept the boat afloat despite
sixty-foot waves, thousands of them each day, and sub-zero temperatures
navigating with only a sextant and an unreliable chronometer.
When they reached their destination, they had to scale immense
glaciers to get to help on the other side of the island. It took
another three months to rescue the men who remained on Elephant
Island. The entire ordeal lasted nearly two years.